


drifting alone apart

by empressearwig



Category: Glee
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-08-22
Updated: 2010-08-22
Packaged: 2017-10-11 04:57:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,751
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/108667
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/empressearwig/pseuds/empressearwig
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Rachel doesn't regret not sleeping with Jesse.</p>
            </blockquote>





	drifting alone apart

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the "I Think We're Alone Now" challenge at nothing_hip.

Rachel doesn't regret not sleeping with Jesse. She has a list of reasons why not sleeping with him turned out to be one of the best decisions she ever made, starting with she wasn't ready and ending with he broke her heart in a parking lot while his teammates laughed and pelted her with eggs.

She doesn't regret it. But sometimes she wonders if it's the reason she can't stop thinking about what it might have been like if she had.

***

The first time Rachel dreams about Jesse is two weeks after Regionals. She doesn't even realize it is a dream at first, it's so vivid and _real_, and Rachel thinks it feels more like a memory than a dream.

(That she might wish it were a memory, she ignores.)

They're alone in her bedroom, the door shut and the shades drawn. There's music on in the background -- _Phantom of the Opera_, Rachel would know it anywhere, and she's proud of her ability to recognize it even when Jesse's kissing the spot on her neck that she likes and trailing his fingertips up underneath the hem of her skirt, and it's all Rachel can do to keep breathing, let alone recognize music. Before she met Jesse, she'd have denied that there was anything more important than music. Now she knows that's not true.

"You're not paying attention to me," Jesse says, and she can actually feel his breath hot against her throat. It doesn't feel like a dream.

She shivers, her hands clenching in the fabric of his shirt.

"That's better," he says, and he rolls them over, so that her legs are hooked around his hips. She grinds down against him and he lets out a hiss. He tangles a hand in her hair and drags her down for a deep kiss.

His fingers trail higher and skim against the edge of her plain cotton underwear, and Rachel actually feels herself start to blush. She pulls back just enough to anxiously breathe out his name. It seems even in her dreams, she's not sure she's ready for more.

"It's okay," he says, pressing kisses along her jaw. "If you want, I'll stop. I promise. Just --"

Before he can say anything else, she kisses him. It's the answer that he wants. He slips a finger beneath the cotton and against her, and she can't quite stop the gasp that comes out of her lips. Another finger joins the first and he presses against her clit and Rachel can't believe she ever wanted him to stop because this feels so much better than it ever does when she does that and --

She jerks awake, Jesse's name spilling off her lips. Her breath is coming in small gasps and her whole body is thrumming with arousal.

When she slides her hand between her legs to finish what the dream started, she tries not to think about Jesse. She tries to think about Finn, her wonderful, patient _boyfriend_ Finn, instead, but it's no use. Even in her fantasies, Jesse demands star billing.

But she doesn't say his name as she comes. She won't give him the satisfaction.

***

The first time Rachel thinks about Jesse while she's with Finn is two days later. It's late, just past sunset and the sky is mostly dark. They're parked at an old abandoned drive in movie theater, making out in the backseat of Finn's car. She feels very much like a teenager. It's less exciting than she always thought it would be.

She's pressed back into the vinyl seat and Finn's heavy on top of her. She let him talk her out of her blouse ten minutes ago and she's ready to let him talk her out of her bra, too, only he can't seem to figure out the clasp. She doesn't offer to help.

Memories come to her unbidden. Memories of the first time she let Jesse talk her into the backseat of his car. She hadn't let him even try to take her bra off that night, that had happened a week later in her bedroom, while her dads thought they were rehearsing. She supposes it was rehearsal of a sort. Jesse hadn't fumbled with the clasp. She remembers the way that he'd slowly peeled the lace away from her skin, the feel of his hands against her breast, the deep pull she felt when he sucked a nipple into his mouth, what his hair felt threaded through her fingers as she held him there.

She feels that same low pull now. It has nothing to do with Finn.

She reaches around her back to unhook the bra herself, drops it to the floor of the car. Finn kisses her. She tries to act like she doesn't feel someone else's hands on her skin.

He doesn't seem to catch on. She tells herself it's because she's a better actress than she thought.

She knows that's not it.

***

The dreams don't stop. They come, night after night, leaving her sweaty, turned on and furious at her subconscious for refusing to let her move on. It doesn't matter what she tries -- white noise, two hours on the elliptical before bed, sleeping pills -- none of it makes the dreams stop.

She won't let herself wonder if that means that she doesn't want them to stop.

She stops returning Finn's phone calls. Every time he touched her, she felt Jesse's hands. Every time he kissed he, she wished it was with Jesse's lips.

Finn said all the words she'd wanted to Jesse to say. She doesn't know why she hates him for that, but she does.

She hates Jesse, too. She hates herself most of all.

***

In the end, Rachel goes back to the library. She made up a list of reasons why, wrote them down on a piece of her personalized stationary, like that made them anything more than excuses.

She's going to the library to see Jesse.

She sees him the minute she walks in the door. He's sitting at the piano (their piano, her mind insists), playing a melody she doesn't recognize. Even though it's summer in Ohio and that means it's eighty-five and humid on a good day, he's wearing his ridiculous leather jacket, the one that she knows he wears because he thinks it makes him look like a brunette James Dean. She never had the heart to tell him how wrong he was.

Rachel could tell him that now. But she wants something from him first.

She approaches the piano from behind. "Hello, Jesse," she says, and she's glad to see his fingers tremble just a little against the keys.

He turns to face her, slowly. "Rachel." He licks his lips. "What are you --"

She holds up a hand to stop him. "Please don't, I did not come here to hear whatever paltry apology you might offer for the act of violence you allowed your teammates to inflict upon me."

"Then why did you come?"

She lets the words hang in the air for a minute, weighs her words carefully. She'd practiced a speech in front of her mirror like she'd practiced countless speeches accepting Tony Awards before. But now, in the moment, it doesn't seem to fit. She decides to improvise. "I think," she says. "I think we should have sex."

It's short, it's to the point, and the look of shock on his face more than makes up for throwing away all of her carefully chosen words. She counts to twenty and when he still hasn't said anything, raises an eyebrow. "Well?"

He stands up, shoves his hands into his pockets. "Okay," he says. "Now?"

It's her turn to blink at him in surprise and she sees the corners of his mouth turn up in a self-satisfied smirk. She nods. "Now would be acceptable."

They walk out to his car side by side, his hand pressed to the small of her back. She hates that he can do more to her with one touch than Finn could do with a hundred.

Jesse opens the car door for her and she stops thinking about Finn.

***

They don't talk on the drive back to her house. He doesn't ask questions like _"I thought Finn was your boyfriend"_ and she doesn't volunteer answers like _"I'm not sure what he is."_ Rachel's glad of it.

He opens her car door when they get to her house, too, escorts her up the front walk with the same hand on her back. She unlocks the front door and he follows her up the stairs to her bedroom. The house is quiet, her dads are both at work and there's no one here to stop her from making what she knows is a mistake.

She closes her bedroom door and she can feel him standing behind her. It doesn't feel like a mistake.

Jesse turns her around to face him. She raises her chin, looks him in the eye defiantly. She doesn't want him to see how nervous she is. She knows he sees it anyway. He's always seen too much.

He kisses her. It's not the kiss she was expecting. Somehow she thought it would be a little angry, a little bitter, but it's sweet and romantic and exactly the kind of kiss she'd always hoped her first time would have. She just didn't think _this_ first time would be that way.

They make their way over to the bed and she thinks _"now"_, but he gently lowers her to the bed, peels her clothes off of her slowly, with almost reverent hands. She feels like she's in a dream.

It feels like a dream, but it's not and when she sees him reach for a condom she's relieved, because she doesn't want to end up a statistic like Quinn. When he finally slips inside her, it hurts, but less than what she thought it would. She opens her eyes and sees him looking down at her with worry in his eyes. "Okay?" he asks, holding himself still above her. She understands then that this is all the apology he can give her.

She nods, raising a hand to his face and drawing him down into a kiss. She accepts.

***

After, there isn't time for it to get awkward, because they both understand he needs to be gone when her dads get home. She walks him to the front door and he kisses her goodbye and then he's gone.

Rachel knows this time it will be for good.


End file.
